Wind and Rain
by jen and kitty
Summary: Summary: JCAL. "There is a silence, an absolute silence and he realizes that it's because they're both holding their breaths." Chapter Four uploaded.
1. black and white

"Wind and Rain"  
  
Chapter One: Black and White  
  
Disclaimer: Mighty Orman came down to us on a white cloud and commanded us to write the Story of Carby in His name. We told him to fuck off and wrote this instead.   
  
Summary: JC/AL. "There is a silence, an absolute silence and he realizes that it's because they're both holding their breaths."  
  
Authors' Notes: Co-authored fic that's taken two months to get this far because we realized neither of us can write. With many thanks to Lesbias Sparrow, Starbucks and Diet Coke. :)  
  
==  
  
The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does.  
-- Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141  
  
==  
  
He sees it on the sheets a moment before she does.  
  
Lit with the morning sunlight it's dried into the fabric like misshapen teardrops, edges staining the blue print flower petals red.  
  
Instinct drives forward and she looks up, glancing at him almost accusingly, as if he were part of its conspiracy. The "what?" continues from her thoughts to her tongue even as she swallows the word into silence. It wasn't supposed to be there. What was it doing there? Her thoughts go from the ridiculous to the absurd and back through the span of time their eyes meet. So flustered, she hasn't a sense of how long that is before the realization that she's again staring at the reddened spots on the bedspread sinks in.  
  
She's on her period, she's cut, he's hurt, she's ill? She's pregnant, or it's an old stain, or it's food, or maybe it'snotthere?  
  
The morning is suddenly rushing past and she's looking at him, at the bed, at nothing, at everything all together, and he turns away out of courtesy, somehow understanding what she can't process.  
  
And she wants to start the day over again.  
  
The privacy of the bathroom comfortably surrounds her, and she feels the rush of relief in the unclenching of her fingers. "What the hell?" and "shit" are smudges of black beneath her eyes before she moves away from the mirror, finding a seat and a whispered, "okay" on the edge of the bathtub.  
  
Reasons crowd, pushing and shoving as she slows the current to filter for the logical, head in hands, hands in hair, wanting to disregard everything before acknowledging anything.  
  
It could be a stain from...is she pregnant? Maybe it had been there for a whi...no. Her last period was...God, could she really be pregnant?  
  
She resigns with a sigh to the ceiling, the white smoothness blurring her attempts to focus, and she's abruptly reminded of the existence of the same ceiling in the bathroom of her once-upon-a-house with Richard.  
  
And she's almost shaking, little silent tremors, and it scares her that she's scared.  
  
Days, going backward, and she has to count on her fingers, pressing them against her thighs as though it isn't real until she does.  
  
Her period wasn't today; it was soon, wasn't it? But it wasn't today.  
  
She loses count at thirteen, or maybe fourteen, and has to start again, the numbers coming out in whispered breath to accompany the mathematical complexity taking place on her hands.  
  
Twenty four...twenty five...  
  
She's out of days, but by three. She's only early by three.  
  
And her smile is a flood as it washes through and drowns her in the relief of the ridiculous. It was okay. Everything was okay. Somehow she had gotten off where she was supposed to be on the pill, not that it was unusual. She had done it before, sometimes even finding the pill on the counter the next morning from where she'd forgotten about it.  
  
It must have been on nights they didn't sleep together, or when he wore a condom, or when she was just goddamn lucky. She turns on the shower, hands shaking with giddiness and the fear of such a close call.  
  
She is definitely going to take that birth control like clockwork from now on, but this morning, at this moment, it was all okay.  
  
He knocks on the bathroom door as she steps beneath the hot water, his tentative, "Abby?" bringing a smile to her lips.  
  
"Yeah?" And she wants to hum, maybe even sing to something.  
  
The water soaks up his voice and she only catches the end of his question. "...okay?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Are you okay?"  
  
"Yeah! Yes. Yes, I'm fine."  
  
"You sure?"  
  
She laughs and nods to the shower wall as substitute. "Yes!"  
  
"Okay." And he sounds embarrassed. "I'm heading out, so I'll see you at work?"  
  
"I'm on at one."  
  
He opens the door and pops his head in. "Want to meet me earlier for lunch?"  
  
"You buying?"  
  
"Only the very best John Carter catered Doc Magoos' food for you."  
  
"Really?" She slides open the shower playfully and waves him to her, planting a water soaked kiss on him when he arrives. "That's John Truman Carter III, by the way."  
  
He manages a mumbled "mmmhmm" as she kisses him again, savoring their goodbye until she starts to shiver from the incoming draft.  
  
"Enjoy your morning."  
  
"I'll meet you at noon."  
  
And she indulges in a long shower, humming the songs from her soon-to-be-released album until her fingers are prune-like and she's used enough water to deprive the whole of a third-world country.  
  
It's only after she turns off the shower that she sees the watery red droplets falling, a tiny rivulet forming to streak across the wet floor like a pink tearstain.  
  
She is bleeding through the tampon.  
  
====  
  
There should be an immediate reaction, an appropriate emotion. Mothers would have taken steps, would have followed some maternal instinct into action.  
  
And she wants to know what to do.  
  
So she stands in the bathroom.  
  
It seems so easy, doing something, choosing between the wrong and the right, but she's thinking about how her hair is still wet, or thinking nothing at all, knowing that she's lost touch with understanding any of it.  
  
Sometimes she moves to the door, fingertips brushing the handle or palm resting against the wood, wanting to make sure it's still closed. And when she moves back towards the sink or the shower, she stops halfway, suddenly unsure why she didn't leave the bathroom in the first place.  
  
She turns off the light, preferring the dullness of daylight and the way it pools out in windowed squares on the floor. She means to sit, but can't get comfortable so stands on the unlit tiles holding her breath because it reminds her to let it out again.  
  
Sometimes she wishes he is there, mostly on the other side of the door, mostly to be a distraction and give her a reason to hide, but sometimes because she needs him to tell her what to do.  
  
Because she stands with her hair dripping onto her shoulders and down her back and she doesn't know what's her fault or how to feel or what has happened or if everything she's thinking and everything she's decided has simply become irrational.  
  
No one needs to tell her that she would make a terrible mother. Look at the first time. She might have just done that again.  
  
And maybe that's why. Maybe this is why. Maybe she isn't supposed to be a mother.  
  
She doesn't even know if he wants children. Wants them with her. Or if she wants them with him. Or even at all.  
  
Because she looks in the mirror and sees relief and guilt, and rests her hands on the sink because she's scared yet safe, and all she wants is to make up her mind and find a way out of the bathroom.  
  
Her hair is falling over her face to mix with tears of frustration and it doesn't matter what's wet or dry anymore.  
  
But she feels the thickening silence build around her and opens the door only to find it crowded in the rest of her apartment.  
  
And she needs to breathe, to do something.  
  
She doesn't stop moving until she's outside at the bottom of her steps unable to choose a direction to turn, but her hands are getting the cigarette by the time she remembers why she's here.  
  
It doesn't make it to her mouth, doesn't get lit, but rests in her shaking hand until she spreads her fingers and watches it fall to the sidewalk.  
  
Sometimes she wants to be good enough, wants to take back everything she's done and redo it the way it should be, wants to fix whatever isn't working.  
  
But she doesn't know who she can call. Everyone seems so threatening.  
  
She doesn't want to do something wrong. Doesn't want to do anything.  
  
So she calls Susan.  
  
====  
  
Ironically, her hand is calm as she dials the numbers on the phone, but her shuddered breaths reverberate through the mouthpiece back to her.  
  
Ringing...ringing...  
  
She avoids looking in the mirror, so stares absently at the blur of wood from the dresser in front of her. She's caught by the sight of her hand clenched around its edge, knuckles white with the strength of her grip, and for a minute she's convinced that the hand doesn't belong to her.  
  
Ringing abruptly becomes the click of a receiver.  
  
And she says "Susan?" before there is even a "hello?" suddenly knowing she shouldn't have called and wanting to hang up.  
  
"Abby?"  
  
She hears a shift in the background, a creak of the bed and a clearing of a sleep-logged throat in the fleeting pause.  
  
"Abby, is that you?"  
  
"Uh...yeah." The reason for the sounds finally dawns on her. "I woke you. I'm sorry I should have thought...I didn't realize...I was just calling to, because, for...it's not important, I'll tell you at work, sorry, thank you, go back to sl-"  
  
"Are you okay? What's wrong?"  
  
"Nothing. It's nothing. I was just...it's not-"  
  
"Abby." Her warning is unmistakable. "What happened?"  
  
"I...I think..." A breath. "I..."  
  
There are no words, and the whitened hand remains the property of someone else. "Do you think you could come over?" It even sounds pathetic to her.  
  
But there is no hesitation on the line. "Let me change and I'll be right there. Your apartment?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Okay. Abby? I'll be right there."  
  
Her hand has returned, blood flowing into her fingers in an angry red rush. And she hears her thank you given to a dial tone.  
  
====  
  
She moves as though playing a role on stage; rehearsed movements, stiff and slightly exaggerated in their normalness.   
  
She puts the kettle on for tea. She pulled the sheets off her - their - bed, pulled them off, bunched them together so that the streaks lost themselves in the folds and the stenciled flowers and stuffed it into the laundry basket.   
  
There is nothing she can do about the blood that has seeped into the mattress.   
It's a dark angry bruise that will never wash out, will never heal.  
  
The kettle whistling snaps her back into her role. She places the teabag into a mug carefully, pours out the water. As though dreaming of herself making tea. Her hands tremble and the boiling water splashes onto the rim and to her hand. She hisses and curses, withdrawing from it.   
  
The immediate pain is almost a relief - it is something to focus on other than the dull and steady ache coming from her stomach.   
  
She sips the tea twice before taking it to her main room and sitting on the couch, reaching for the TV remote. She flicks through TV station after TV station looking for something familiar, a movie, a face, a comedy. Something that she knew all the words to and could say along with the actors, feeling like part of something other than herself.  
  
A news channel: someone important had died. Photos of the person flickering across the screen as other people said he'd never be forgotten for whateveritwashedid. Death echoing death echoing death.  
  
It's a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart was coming back down from the railing of the bridge and she quickly changes the channel before she can see him running down the fake movie set streets proclaiming the wonderfulness of life, reciting the lines from a script, leaving footprints in fake snow.  
  
She switches back over to CNN. The stock market. Things were going up, things were going down, this making a bunch of men gather together rather primitively into the middle of a room and yell things at each other whilst holding bits of paper.  
  
She turns the volume down and continues listening, closing her eyes tightly. A deep breath. Then another. The sharp pain subsiding back into the familiar ache.  
  
When the intercom comes to life she is thrown momentarily, before quickly remembering her role, her lines.   
  
Her hands shaking as she buzzes Susan into her apartment the only thing betraying her.  
  
== 


	2. there are no words

"Wind and Rain"

Chapter Two: There Are No Words

Authors' Notes: It's okay, Nikki and Hotti647. We're not really sure if we get it either. With many thanks to the encouraging reviewers, Red Bull and House of Pies.

The duration of this fic has yet to be determined but the writing staff asks that you stay in your seat with your seat belt fastened until the chapters have come to a full stop. Complimentary caffeinated drinks will be served in our first-class accommodation, we ask that those in economy smile prettily and prohibit kicking the chair in front of them if they are not partial to their five pretzels. Enjoy your journey and thank you for flying the friendly skies.

Edited to add: Heh, oops, this might help- the italicized scene at the end is a flashback.

==

Another night slips away. In other words I should say/there are no words he should say. There are no words.  
-- Ben Kweller, 'In Other Words'

==

She doesn't think about what she will say until Susan is standing at her door.

Suddenly there needs to be a reason, a purpose to what she wanted from it all to begin with. She hadn't planned what to say, or worried about answering or explaining, because somehow Susan had just known, had taken care of it and whatever was wrong had been fixed.

So she says it in the doorway, giving Susan the chance to bolt before taking the final step inside.

She means to soften it with graceful words, with tact and delicacy. She means to be emotional and breakdown, means to pretend or forget all together that she ever made that phone call, but Susan just stands there with unbrushed hair and a hasty outfit, full of distress, unconcerned with the time or her appearance...waiting, and her decision to choose one of any possibility ends in a simple, "I'm having a miscarriage."

And for a moment the word sounds meaningless.

But it's not, and she knows because she needs to look away before she can read whatever is in Susan's expression.

She remembers walking back to the couch, trusting Susan to close the door whether she chose to leave or stay, remembers holding her warm mug between her hands, not wanting to taste so smelling her tea – peppermint - and then it all becomes twisted, what she did, what she said, everything mixed and muddled and she doesn't think too hard for order because she's not sure if she wants to discover that none of it ever happened at all.

Events might not be in sequence, but she knows she was in the kitchen, remembers the quiet questions, watched the tea swirl around the sink to stain the white sides before draining away.

"When did it start?"

"A few hours ago."

"How many weeks?"

"I'm not sure."

The silence is enough of a reaction and she's washing her hands just to hear something else.

"Have you called Carter yet?"

She says 'no' in the shake of her head, back and forth, slowly but continuously, as if repeating the answer might change it to something different. The implication in Susan's look is clear enough, but it's unaware, seeing only half the picture, so she fills her in.

"He didn't know."

She remembers the multiple trips to the bathroom and Susan's insistence on taking her blood pressure. She remembers the pain and the Tylenol and arguing her way out of going to a hospital.

She knows she talked, but isn't sure if she said any of it out loud. Because she remembers it all happening in one momentary flicker, seven hours somehow the length of a candle's last sputter.

She keeps telling her to leave, apologizing and saying she's okay now, that she can handle it...but Susan has stubbornly turned deaf and leaves only once to return with more sanitary pads and tea.

A new cup replaces the old beside her and she looks up because she finds 'thank you' in the gesture and hopes everything she says in her heart can fit in it, too.

"It's chamomile." But she sees the other answers in Susan's smile and is relieved.

"Taking the fun out of letting me guess?"

"...or I could be lying."

"Won't know 'til I taste, is that it?"

She remembers the calendar and Susan's help, the calculating, biting her lip at the discovery, and remembers going to take another shower, needing to be alone, to be refreshed and clean, but making it fast as if unable to be with only herself and the silence and the thoughts that filled it.

There might have been a book or a magazine. She can't remember where or when, can't remember reading, but had the sensation of paper on her fingers, felt as it was gently removed.

"I wasn't finished." And she grabs at it, momentarily on the brink of a child's tantrum before she recognizes the panic and labels it 'irrational'.

"Okay, tell me what you were reading about, then."

The blank makes her cynical. "Tragedy."

"And we're definitely moving to the TV now."

She doesn't need to ask Susan to call in sick for her, doesn't need to tell her to keep the miscarriage news private, and doesn't need to explain as she heads to the bathroom again, or abruptly stops in the middle of a sentence to wait out the sharp stabs.

And Susan doesn't ask if she's okay, doesn't ask if she needs another cup of tea or water- just always has a fresh cup waiting, and stays entertained by pointing out the gossip she finds in the random magazines laying around the apartment.

"JLo sounds like a sugar packet."

"Sweet and Low?"

"Exactly. Is it supposed to be a trend? SLe doesn't even work."

"And what if she gets married?"

"If it were Ben Affleck it'd be- JAf? Or would it just be a single syllable 'JAF'?"

"Or she could hyphenate."

"JLo-Af. Oh God, that sounds terrible."

She knows he called at 11:43, can still see the blinking light on the answering machine. It has been joined by other messages now, but she doesn't listen to them, remembers turning down the volume after she first started to hear his voice.

"...you're sick? Call me when..."

And she doesn't call him back, doesn't know what she'd say, and refuses to do so just because Susan's, "Abby" makes her feel she should.

She remembers looking at the clock when it read 10:20, remembers watching bits of 'The View' and listening as Susan informed the TV that Star should visit County before discussing biological weapon attacks and wondering aloud who this Dr. Nancy Snyderman was and why Susan had never heard of her.

There was the time when she slept, and the time when she woke. She knows she wasn't allowed to wash the dishes, gave up on the crossword puzzle, and failed to sweet talk Susan.

"You know, your tea is very good."

"I know."

"But you're not going to let me have coffee, are you?"

"No."

"You're going to give me tea again, aren't you?"

"Yup."

She doesn't have to explain how she's been sober, doesn't need to say that she's on the patch, doesn't have to admit to or discuss what was her fault or what she could have done differently because Susan never asks and never assumes.

And she doesn't know if she'd acknowledge the truth anyway.

She remembers spilling her tea, refusing to let Susan touch it, cleaning it up herself...but having to use more paper towels than necessary and finding the carpet refusing to dry and being unable to prevent the tears she didn't expect.

And then she remembers the harshness of light, remembers the shadows in the kitchen and the way she wasn't comfortable with either so stayed awhile in the bathroom, in the shower, wanting to leave but somehow at peace.

It's been over seven hours and she can almost believe that with a little more time she could get herself to forget it all.

"Abby." And she had been silent for so long that Susan has to ask the question again. "How are you feeling?"

She's not, but she doesn't understand it and hasn't figured out how to say it, the shrug and shaking of her head the explanation as both happen at once.

Apparently it's an answer because Susan doesn't ask a third time.

The tea is cool, but she refrains from comment, afraid of what even a simple conversation could lead to. She watches her fingers trace the edge of the kitchen table, unable to think of a safe topic, wishing she were alone, wanting to be far far away...

"You need to talk about it some time."

Does she? Would anything change? Would she roll out of bed one morning a better person, stepping with the right foot before the left, able to make the right decisions and think the right thoughts, able to be fixed and forgiven?

Because she's sure life doesn't work that way. Because what if she can never describe how her hands tremble over her stomach, or the way she can stare in the mirror at nothing at all?

How is she supposed to cry about something she can no longer control? How can she think anything, do anything different, when she still can't decide how she should even feel?

Because what if none of this is really happening in the first place?

====

He takes the steps to her apartment two at a time and he isn't sure why. He's almost out of breath when he reaches her landing and has his keys out, tempted to call out to her from here.

The silence when he enters her apartment unnerves him.

"Abby." He says her name so softly that he barely believes he's said it at all.

It's on the second time his eyes scan the room that he sees she's actually there and that someone else is with her.

Susan hesitates a moment before she smiles at him, as though having to remind herself to, remind herself which muscles to use. He can only stare at her blankly for a moment before his eyes flicker across to the back of Abby's head.

He feels as though he's just walked into the middle of a conversation that he wasn't meant to hear, the weight of the silence between them giving everything away.

"Abby," he says again as if reminding her of herself.

This time she turns to look at him, only she's forgotten to smile.

He holds her gaze, attempting to read her expression, read the red around her eyes and the damp in her hair as though she was ever that easy to read, when he knows that so much of what she says is in what she doesn't, or won't let herself say. He speaks Abby, but it's more of a second language.

Susan takes a breath, breaking the silence and his gaze away from Abby and onto the floor – something other than the darkness in her eyes, and stands up, reaching for a coat lying next to her. He notices she's only in slacks and a tee shirt, no make up.

She and Abby share a look and with concern she says, "If you need me just call, okay? It's not like I need my sleep or anything."

Abby smiles, looking away, "Thanks..." For everything. "For this. I mean it, Susan."

Susan dismisses her, giving a smile that implies she had already known what this meant to her and that she knew Abby would have done the same for her had she needed this, before wrapping herself up in her coat and moving to the door. She turns to look back at them both briefly before closing the door behind her.

"Abby."

He keeps saying her name and she's not sure if she likes being reminded. "It's okay," she says without meeting his gaze.

Lips pursed, he moves to stand directly in front of where she sits. He stands there uselessly for a moment. "I've been calling all day and nobody would pick up and then Weaver told me you were ill and Susan had called in and- I just- I was so worried."

His hand hovers above her momentarily before he brings it down to touch her hair softly. She looks up at him, smiling although it doesn't reach her eyes. "I'm okay."

She knows he's waiting for her to say something else, but all she wants is this moment. This moment when he doesn't know anything and she can almost pretend she doesn't ever have to tell him.

He only reluctantly removes his hand from her hair to sit down on the table in front of her, his hand instinctively going out to meet hers. She can feel the press of each cool finger.

"What happened?" She looks so pale and thin sitting like that, smudges under sore eyes that are unable to meet his.

She watches their hands together like this for a moment and then sighs. She doesn't know how to put their loss into words, how to put words into all the blood, into how sorry she is for what she keeps putting him through when he doesn't deserve any of it and deserves so much better than anything she could possibly give him, when she can rarely give enough for herself, when her body couldn't even give enough for this – "I miscarried."

He seems frozen for a moment and she's tempted to tell him again, wondering if she'd said anything at all. Part of her hoping that maybe he hadn't heard her and that she won't have to tell him, that he doesn't need to know about this because it's not as though there's anything he can do – and she, she wants this thing to work out with them, and she's failed him enough as it is.

He begins shaking his head, confusion in his eyes as he stares back at their hands, his fingers over hers, "I didn't know you were, uh-"

She can't say anything but nods softly.

He looks back at her, his eyes now seeming black and wet, like rain on roads in moonlight. "How long were you -did you know how long..."

She's been holding her breath and only realizes this as she finds the words and her voice again. "Eight weeks... Almost."

He's shaking his head, looking at their hands. "I was calling all day." Chewing his lip, fighting the burning at the backs of his eyes, "I tried calling all day and I –I was so worried. Why didn't you, call, or, or, tell me or... I could have been there..." and it occurs to him, "you called Susan-"

"There wouldn't have been anything you could have done."

He's hurting and this hurts him even more. He's still shaking his head. "...Not even for you?"

The room feels too small, he's too close and this all seems so surreal to her, even her voice feeling as though it's being broadcast from a distance away. The TV's still on and she wishes that she had access to the script of her life, knowing what to say and what to feel, a director standing by to tell her where she should stand, making her re-do everything again until she'd perfected it – if she ever could.

She doesn't meet his eyes. "I'm sorry."

They're silent again for moments. He strokes her fingers softly, his voice just as soft as his hands, "And you're okay?"

When he looks up he sees she's nodding.

She takes a breath and stands up, beginning to move to the bathroom. He moves with her and by the time he's standing he already has his arms wrapped around her, his lips to her forehead, kissing her hair and mumbling the things he knows he's supposed to say in moments like this – the desperate things you say to hold moments together, mixed in with the things he doesn't know how to say, that he tries saying instead by pressing his lips to her forehead again and again.

She's stiff in his embrace for a moment, her back ramrod straight, before her arms reach around his shoulders and she's pulling him down towards her, hiding her tears in his sweater.

They could have been a family.

====

_The hallways were bare. It was sometime past midnight and anyone with any shred of sanity was tucked away safely in bed.  
  
She, however, was afforded no such sanity.  
  
She peered into another maternity room searching for his familiar form, wishing that Randy could have been a little more specific with her message taking.  
  
She was about to move along with her search when she caught a glimpse of him. She quietly opened the door all the way, her lips beginning to curl upwards.  
  
John was talking to the small girl. There he was in a rocker, kid in arms, textbooks on his lap. His pens strewn about on the floor where he'd tossed them so that she couldn't scrape her face or an eye on any of them as he held her.  
  
"Say 'I wanna be a tax-accountant.'" The baby's eyes widened at him, and she opened her mouth in a gurgled attempt. He grinned at her. "Say, 'I wanna become a bon vivant, courted by the elite and in demand at parties everywhere.'"  
  
"Kid, you gotta listen to me," he said. "Listen, this is important. You can be a maudlin hippie chick, or an angry activist spouting canned rhetoric. Hang out in coffee shops and offer pretentious commentary on authors you've never read. Drop names like Wittgenstein and Camus. Whatever. Just please, please, don't let the great altar of passivity steal your soul."  
  
She watched this amused.  
  
He noticed her watching and looked back down at the small pink form, apologizing profusely and making promises to come and visit and discuss this whole Iraq crisis at some other point.  
  
"Is that the girl you helped bring out in the E.R?"  
  
He was smiling as he placed his hands in hers and they walked through the halls together. He seemed thoughtful – like he'd just arrived to a conclusion about something and was happy with it.  
  
"Yea, not doing too bad considering her mom was high on crack at the time." He rolled his eyes before his grin returned, "She needed to be changed."  
  
"Who doesn't?"  
  
"Just sad, y'know."  
  
She nodded, "I know."  
  
"Feel like I should do more..." It was one of those things they always said and always meant.  
  
She squeezed his hand softly, shrugging, "You do more."  
  
He was quiet for a moment, with the same contemplative expression he'd had moments before, as they took the elevator down and passed through the Emergency Department, saying the occasional hello and goodbye to Susan, Randy and then Chen as they signed off and went to find his car.  
  
"You want Italian?"  
  
She shook her head, teasing glint in her eye, "Depends. Are you cooking it yourself or just ordering it?"  
  
"I'll even go so far as to open the take out boxes for you."  
  
She laughed, "Open them? All by yourself? You really are too good to me."  
  
He turned to her when she'd buckled in, his expression hesitant. "I, uh, picked up some forms today, from one of the nurses. Adoption forms." She was startled and didn't hide it as he continued, "I mean, on paper I'm the perfect candidate... I have the money, I have the room..."  
  
"What about the time?"  
  
He turned to concentrate on something outside his window as he drove out of the parking lot. "I could figure something out." He shrugged. "I just... I think something like this... I could be good at it. I mean, I think I'm ready for it."  
  
After a moment's pause, when she didn't say anything, he turned to gauge a reaction from her. He wasn't sure what kind of reaction he was hoping for – maybe for her to think that this was something he could do too, he needed to know this from her and he wasn't sure why.  
  
She smiled quietly and turned to look away. "I... think you'd be great with kids."  
  
"Really?" His voice so earnest and unsure, like a child trying out something for the first time. Wanting to be capable of doing this new thing but so afraid of failing, of not being any good at it.  
  
She met his eyes and nodded.  
  
She sighed and reached for the play button on his stereo system. An angry man began yelling out something inaudible about something over the sound of a drum set being attacked. She knew all the words and started singing – or "calling out to mating wolves" as he put it, along with him. He found he also knew most of the words – not that he understood what they meant or why this angry guy was screaming them.  
  
Impulsively he turned to her, "Abby, don't ever change."  
  
She continued to hum the guitar solo to herself before turning to look at him; his eyes were on the road, his cheeks a little flushed, as though he'd just revealed too much.  
  
She smiled, "Okay."  
_  
==


	3. ordinary morning

"Wind and Rain"

Chapter Three: Ordinary Morning

Authors' Notes: None of those weird, italicized flashbacks this time, but they're going to appear eventually... love us, do. With many thanks to everyone who waited for us to figure some more of this out, Lufthansa Airlines and Highway 110.

For Mealz: We're trying to place the story in the current ER timeframe (about episode 15 on), so they're dating but not living together.

==

_The walls have been talking  
About me again  
I'm good for a joke, but when I awoke  
The dream didn't end  
Now every time I turn around  
I'm only sleeping, John, is anybody out there?  
Don't the wounded birds still sing?_

_It's just an ordinary morning  
It's just an ordinary day  
And I'm just an ordinary woman  
Slipping away  
- Sheryl Crow, Ordinary Morning_

_==_

_Maybe grief is like a butterfly and I'm still in the cocoon.  
-- Virginia Ironside_

==

It was inevitable that one day he would wake up and find all the sheets and covers on the other side of the bed. It was part of being in a relationship, going hand in hand with the lacy things tucked back into the drawer and knowing the intimate.

He is surprised to discover that he doesn't seem to mind it.

Forming a cocoon of sorts, the bedding material is built up around and above her, new navy colored sheets managing to have freed a part of themselves from the carnage to rest on the floor. Her face is obscured from him by the slight tilt of her head into the bulky mass of the duvet, but at the foot of the bed, from under the tangle, peeks the delicate curve of her ankle.

It looks so small, so fragile to him, as though this bit of her wasn't supposed to have slipped out from under the disorder - a butterfly doomed because it tried to emerge too early.

She has slept so rarely these last few days, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling on most of the occasions when he wakes at night. He's never sure what to do, and doesn't think it matters anyway – she remains thoughts away, plagued into sleeplessness by her nightmares, or maybe her dreams.

He has had a few himself - the "what ifs" - the happy were no easier than the sad, and reality was always the brutal wake-up. But the dreamed possibilities were helping to heal his pain, to put his mind at ease, and he wishes he could do the same for her.

She wakes when, unable to restrain himself, his fingertips play in the key of Abby over the smooth softness of her foot. She gasps as her eyes fly open, but somehow he knows it isn't his touch that she's reacting to. A few heartbeats pass until she's awake enough to take in her surroundings, eyes still tired despite her night's rest, but she wears her lopsided morning smile for him.

"Your hand's cold," she mumbles as the lost bit of ankle slides back beneath the chaos on her side of the bed.

He indicates his sheetless self. "I wonder why?"

Eyes open wider as she takes in the covers heaped about her, and she gives a half-shrug of apology. "You were snoring."

"I don't snore."

"Sorry to break it to you."

"I was snoring?"

"Loud and clear."

Since _that_ morning she's already out of bed and doing one of any possible things by the time he wakes, and though he worries it's because she was never able to fall asleep, his concerns and questions only lead to rapid fire changes in topics. This morning alone is so full of surprises, and more importantly - the much missed delightful surprises, that he can't properly keep up with the banter.

"It wasn't snoring." His response comes a beat too late and the thickness of awkward silence begins to crawl in. It's like a virus they've contracted – passing it back and forth between them – and he's afraid it'll mutate into something worse before they find the cure.

His hand makes it halfway to her, a desperate attempt to physically reach her before the clouds glaze over her eyes, until realization at what he's doing sets in and he stops, midair, staring at his arm as though wondering how it got stuck there and what precisely he was going to do to get it down.

The days have become a sterile dance of avoidance – of touching, of discussing what had happened, of dealing with it – and he is finding it hard to keep to this slow tempo of evasion when the need for closure seems more important. He isn't sure about the textbook recommendation, but he doesn't think Abby would fit into any of the timetables – she had her own plans for recovery and grief.

"You'll have to do more than that to impress me," she says, creating an excuse for his arm that still hangs in the air.

"Really? This doesn't do it for you?"

"Maybe I'm just missing something."

He pretends to look at it more closely. "No, that's about it I'm afraid."

"Nice try, though."

He doesn't quite know what to do from here... times like these haven't happened in a while, and he's prone to ask her questions because he's forgotten that he'd once been able to read her answers.

But habits kick in.

"How're - "

"I'm fine."

" – you feeling? Oh."

It happens a lot – his questions during the silences – sometimes he thinks of new ways to ask, but it comes out the same, as if he can't move forward to the next phrasing until he's satisfied with the answer he gets for this one.

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day."

He has no response, and the virus spreads again to attack what progress they'd made. It is a disease they can't seem to stop carrying – as though losing their baby isn't enough to handle, parts of their relationship might as well fall off, too.

Having no further reason to remain in bed, he climbs out as she untangles herself from the covers.

"Want the shower?"

"I've actually got one just like it, thanks."

"Go first. I'll make coffee." There would be time yet before they were back to suggestions of their other shower solutions.

"Tea." She hesitates in the bathroom doorway, one foot rubbing against the other, and he wonders if she's nervous about her first day back at work.

She preempts his usual question with a grin. "I'm _fine_."

"And ready for County?"

"Leave it to a doctor to underestimate a nurse."

"Nurse _Manager_."

"Oh, you remembered?"

"Tea?"

"Tea!"

And they are hollering across the apartment, he in the kitchen, and she in the bathroom, fighting a return of their incurable fate by filling her rooms with sound.

====

Trying to carry his coffee and bag in one hand he attempts to open his locker with the other. It doesn't work and he yelps as lukewarm coffee spills down his shirt, thankfully stopping before it reaches his pants. Normally this would be a sign that he might as well just turn back and head for home – but she's laughing. It's the first time he's heard her laugh in days.

He groans as he sets his things down onto the back of a chair, feigning annoyance at her as he begins to unbutton his shirt.

She grins, eyes sparkling, "You're an idiot, you know that?"

He smiles at her, for her. "In my own defense, I do know that."

The room door snaps open and shut and he turns momentarily to see Susan smiling at them, he doesn't return it and looks back at Abby. He watches as she and Susan exchange a good morning, before she turns back to him.

She's still smiling. "I'm going to get an 'I'm with stupid tee shirt.'"

He grins, "For me? Oh you really shouldn't."

Her face is upturned towards him, her eyes bright and he has an impulse to lean in and kiss her. He resists.

"Well, I have to get to work," she says after a pause, her eyes falling away from his like regrets, and the soft shadows beneath them remind him of the way he'd found her when he'd walked into her apartment two days before.

"Right. Me too," he replies lamely.

If he knew spilling coffee on himself was all it would take to make her laugh he would have done it days ago.

She turns to Susan as she begins to walk away. "What's it like out there?"

"Like you never left," she replies with a smile and Abby groans before closing the door behind her.

He turns back to stuffing his coffee stained shirt into his locker.

"I'm sorry," he hears her offer gently. He knows she means it.

He nods, reaching into his locker and trying to get his things out as quickly as possible. It's childish – he feels betrayed by her, when she hasn't deceived him, not really. Abby called her and not him. If anything Susan couldn't be faulted for that but he could – she hadn't wanted him there. And she was the one who had miscarried, bled for their sins, not him, and yet here he was wearing a crown of thorns.

"How are you doing?"

Well, besides the miscarriage, besides the fact that we'd never discussed children and now it seems we won't ever be able to, besides that she called you, besides that, things are pretty good. How are things with you? Had any miscarriages lately?

He finds his stethoscope, throws it over his neck and then reaches for his pens. "I'm-" he stops himself and then shakes his head, "we're going to be okay."

She reaches out, squeezing his shoulder firmly. "Yea, of course." Her hand prompts him to meet her soft blue gaze and when he does she smiles kindly at him. "You think she's really ready to be back at work?"

He turns back to his locker, offering it a cursory glance before slamming it shut. "Uh... she wanted to come back."

"And you as the over protective boyfriend, let her?" She says lightly.

He tries smiling for her, but it feels all wrong. "Turns out she's more stubborn than I am."  
She grins, moving to go back to work... then turns to look at him, "Call me..."

I'm sure she will, he almost says, but instead smiles tightly and nods, watching her leave before he releases his smile and sighs.

He wants to shout back out to her that everything's good, everything's going to be just great, announce that he's been moved back up her speed dialing places to the number one spot, that the last time had been a fluke, a misdial, it wouldn't happen again because she was letting him in on everything this time around, let there be no mistaking it. Just because it would feel so good to yell right now, to anyone, and at the moment she's a better target for his anger than most.

Or he could yell out to her the truth - he doesn't know what he's doing, he doesn't know whether she's pretending nothing has happened and that nothing has changed between them, or if everything has changed between them and he's the one pretending that nothing has happened. That he's never been number one on her speed dial and only now is he realizing what number he is.

He wants to know if when you ask someone to marry you when they become pregnant with your child, do you also ask if the reverse is true?

They don't tell you these things in glossy pamphlets with photos of posed couples holding hands and holding on together, it's not something they have classes about in medical school. He's checked.

It's not one of those things you can ask friends (and what friends?), because he feels selfish enough as it is, when this isn't about him at all.

====

It wasn't though they'd get service any faster if they asked, but like a group of pigeons, each tottering about to follow another, they crowded the front of the admit desk in order to better convince her that their problem was definitely more severe than this guy's and would she please get them a doctor before they made a formal complaint to get her fired?

Handing three off to Pratt ("...and I was going to bring you a welcome back present.") clears a few seats, and without consideration to their babble, she points at the vacancies. "There, there and there. Sit or leave."

She walks away before their stunned silence wears down.

It is too loud, too busy, all day people around her in pain and worry – a tidal wave of troubles that she is supposed to know how to fix. She doesn't think she'd gain many points with her next patient if she concedes that she's been having difficulty controlling her own health but he should sit back and relax because he's in good hands.

"Giving yourself over to the job?" Susan asks as she passes in the hall.

A shake of the head. "Only if I'm paid overtime."

"You forget you work at County?" With a smile Susan taps her watch. "It's past seven. Go home."

And do what? "Right. Thanks. G'night."

The day hadn't been much different than she'd expected... a full patient load and a smattering of questions revolving around that 2-day flu – and as she lied about her sickness and the recovery that followed, she couldn't help but wonder how karma was going to materialize when it felt it was ready for its due.

That she feels the same now as she had before work is cause for concern – constant thoughts streaming through her mind despite her attempts to submerge herself in any number of duties in the hospital had not been planned for.

"Abby!"

She turns, and it's Kerry beckoning her to the admit desk.

"There's a management meeting tomorrow afternoon I need you to attend."

Hello to you, too. No, I'm fine, had a miscarriage. I know. It's a bitch, isn't it? "Okay."

"Just the basics, but we've had to postpone a few times," she explains. "I hear you're feeling better?"

Karma karma karma. "Yeah."

"Good. Welcome back."

Kerry bustles away, all business and unchanged, and there is no more a connection between them now than there ever was before.

Shared experiences are merely a coincidence of there not being enough experiences to share.

====

She tried calling Maggie while he was having a shower.

She'd spent the day mapping out the exchange in her head; the things she needed to say, the things she needed to hear, and then in this conversation inside her head, as soon as she put the phone down she felt better, all the metaphorical weight was lifted from her and she was left feeling as though everything was actually going to be okay.

Because she needed to hear someone to tell her it was going to be okay, not because she believed it, but because they did.

She's lying across her bed, this conversation playing out in her head as she watches the phone, watching it cautiously the way Anne Boleyn might have eyed an axe.

Her stomach has been aching all day and she can hear the muffled sounds of water turning off, then his wet footsteps as he walks out of the shower and finds a towel.

What if when she puts the receiver down she doesn't feel better, the weight still hangs across her, her stomach still aches, what if she finds she still has to try and live with the fact that it's herself on the other end of the line?

She shuts her eyes and feels him enter the room before she hears him. He's warmth; there's a heat that he brings with him whenever he walks into a room and it still surprises her.

She opens her eyes, trying to smile for him, trying to appear okay, hoping to settle for innocuous.

He returns the smile sincerely and it makes her stomach ache even more.

She hasn't expected him to be staying these past few nights with her; hasn't expected much of anything from him. He's been making her reluctantly eat take outs with him when he arrives home, despite of or in spite of her pleas of not being all that hungry, offering her time, space, a lack of questions about what had happened, a lack of anger or hurt, only allowing himself to ask how she is every few seconds or so and having to satisfy himself with her monosyllabic answers.

She watches as he pulls his towel off, catching a glimpse of his long white thighs, thin curls at his groin, the shape of his hip, before he steps into a pair of boxers.

He hasn't kissed her since and the nights they spend together involve layers of clothing that leave her feeling cold the next morning.

"How're you feeling?"

She shrugs, "You mean since you last asked me fifteen minutes ago?"

He smiles as he lays down next to her, almost leaning over to touch her but hesitating. His skin smells soft and warm. "Fifteen minutes ago I asked you if you needed anything."

"I think I need you to stop asking me how I am." He looks a little wounded until she smiles, closing her eyes, "It's late."

He gets up to switch the light off and somewhere underneath an old sweater of his she's wearing she hides the fact that she's grateful he's here.

"I'm okay," she says in the dark, feeling him crawl into bed next to her.

She waits to hear his breathing steady but it doesn't. After a silence of minutes he rolls close beside her, his warm breath caressing her neck along with a finger and whispers, "You know you can tell me anything, anything at all."

She gently rocks herself to sleep.

==


	4. elsewhere

"Wind and Rain"

Chapter Four: Elsewhere

Authors' Notes: With a year of thanks to Charli for her timed writing exercises, Parliament Lights and Prozac.

We're working through writing, timing, life difficulties, but thank you all for your continued interest and patience.

----

_You say there's not a lot of me left anymore.  
Just leave it alone.  
- Tori Amos, Amber Waves_

----

Things start breaking: fingernails, coffee mugs, buildings, skylines, promises, hearts, moments, relationships, lives.

She's learned most things in life are made to be broken.

"Cutting class?"

Abby lifts her head at the voice, smiling slightly as she passes the figure of Susan, who stands behind the admit desk giving her a knowing gaze. "I'm sneaking a cigarette behind the bike shed, care to join me?"

She shakes her head and calls out, "Enjoy your early death!"

"I'm trying to, thank you!"

Things start breaking and she knows that they can't be fixed, are irreplaceable, that most things just continue to go on being broken.

She figures if things are going to break, what's the point in fighting it? What's the point in giving up a cigarette here or there? What's the point in super gluing all the pieces back together when everything is designed to fall apart anyway?

The packet is already out in her hand by the time she steps outside, her fingers trying at the wrapping, her other hand reaching for her lighter.

Carter was in the process of telling Pratt what the "D" in _his_ particular MD stood for and she'd decided that that meant it was time for her to make her escape. He doesn't like to see her smoke and she can't enjoy being able to smoke in front of him, feeling his sad brown eyes watch her like that. He's taken it upon himself to protect her and hates realizing that not even he can save her from herself most of the time.

He doesn't believe in entirely broken things, believes in the magical healing powers of superglue and medicine and kisses in the dark, believes that super glued things can be all the stronger for their cracks and breaks, all the more beautiful.

She puts the lit cigarette to her mouth and inhales.

----

And once you've seen things start to break, it's hard not to start seeing the cracks in everything.

It started snowing in the night, ice being laid into heavy layers along the streets. It's March but winter refuses to sleep.

They're walking at arm's length from each other, stepping carefully along the pavement, waiting for the salt to start thawing through. He wants to keep her warm but he's never been sure what that means.

"How about something to eat then?"

"I'm not hungry."

His tone remains light, "You haven't been hungry for the past week."

"And I have work in half an hour."

He watches her, her breath coming out as thick as cigarette smoke. "Okay then, later."

She almost slips and he reaches out a hand for her, but she finds her balance again before she falls. "Uh, don't you have the night shift?"

"After that."

"Is there such thing as 'after a night shift'?" She turns to him, her eyes a dark contrast to the snow, and they both come to a stop. "Look, I need to get to work; I've had too much time off as it is." She gives a shrug. "I'll see you -- later, okay?"

He doesn't move and watches her footprints in the snow as she continues walking, the world freezing up behind her.

"Who do you think will play us in the TV movie?" His own breath as heavy and cynical as smoke.

She keeps her back to him, shakes her head and he can hear her sigh. "Carter, I don't need this."

"Then tell me what you need."

She sees mother's holding their sick children and asking her why. She's run out of reasons, excuses and now settles on saying nothing.

The truth is that things keep breaking and sometimes they can't be fixed, that sometimes things are made only so that they can be broken.

"What I don't need is to see you standing everywhere I go watching me as though I'm about to fall apart," She turns to him accusingly, "or like I already have. You can't change what happened, you can't change me. You can't – you can't fix me."

The ice has been laid into layers in the night, fastened into layers of mass, into moments so mountainous they can seem almost weightless.

"I know." He bites at his lip, sounding older than he'll ever look, "Only you can."

"I'm not," tired shake of head, "I'm not broken."

How can she be, when she can't even remember the fall? Or what it was like to be un-shattered to begin with?  
  
----  
A deep drag goes down wrong and suddenly she's suffocating because it tastes too dry and too stale, it smells wrong and feels wrong and everything that it was supposed to be isn't anymore.

And she's too afraid to cough.

She holds the cigarette, watching her hand tremble as the fire crawls downward, smoke sucked away by the wind, ashes building and falling until she drops it on the sidewalk and watches as it burns itself out.

She hears the footsteps crunching through the snow behind her and so doesn't jump when she hears his voice. "Did you know that smoking is the leading cause of statistics?"

Luka's hands are plugged deeply into his lab coat pockets and he's looking at her with that easy smile she doesn't get to see very often. She wonders if it's because he's in a good mood – and she hasn't checked the planet alignments recently but she's pretty sure he wasn't due another smile for at least another Pluto year or so, or if it's that he knows something about what's happened and is smiling because he doesn't know what else to do.

"Really?" She grins wryly, meeting his eyes.

"I'm thinking you're the leading cause of those statistics."

She wraps her arms around herself, the winter chill getting to her, "They can't prove that."

He moves to stand closer to her, looking out expectantly at the ambulance bay for an oncoming trauma she presumes. A silence settles over them and she can feel him stealing glances at her. She's about to ask about the trauma if only to get the attention away from herself when he speaks-

----"Abby..."

She hates how he keeps saying her name like that, so broken in his voice. He might as well be smashing ancient china vases at her feet.

"I wanted to be there for you..." The hurt in his eyes, and she has to look away.

"I'm sorry." And she is. She's sorry for everything that's happened between them and for not being all the things she knows he needs.

"I don't blame you for any of this."

Maybe she did jump; maybe it is her fault that they've fallen so far for so long, maybe it is her fault that things keep breaking, maybe it is her fault that when she fell he fell with her.

"And I really wish it hadn't happened... that it could have been something. You know that, right?"

Breath. "I know."

----"How are you doing, Abby?"

So much for deflecting attention away from herself.

She shakes her head, refusing to meet his probing gaze. She wants to laugh at his question. "I'm fine, Luka."

"You were away a few days ago-"

She nods quickly, "I had a stomach... bug thing. It's gone."

He nods with her. "Oh."

Oh. Exactly.

She takes a step back thinking up an excuse about a patient whose stats she really must check up on, an imaginary patient with end stage liver disease and possibly some metastised brain cancer, a family who are out of town too busy to see him; but he hasn't noticed her discomfort, or seems intent on increasing it. "He was worried about you."

She doesn't look at him. "Who?"

"Who," he repeats with a grin. She looks up, opening her mouth to dismiss or explain it all – "When you were sick the past few days, he was really worried. He kept making excuses to call you."

She looks down at her feet, his feet, their footprints in the snow together, the burnt out cigarette. Her hand hovers above her stomach, "I know."

----  
  
The snow crunches beneath his boots as he walks towards her, his voice so gentle it almost hurts. "Why are you so afraid to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"How you're feeling..."

She smiles. "I'm fine."

"...the miscarriage, being pregnant..."

It doesn't take her a second to say, "One in five pregnancies end in miscarriage."

"Abby..."

She moves around, avoiding his eyes, "Stop! Stop saying my name like that. You don't have to deal with this – I do."

He refuses to let this hurt him. "And you don't have to go through it alone."

"It's a little late for that..."

Her eyes are red, full, but she doesn't cry.

"I'm sorry, it's just...it's over. It's done. And I don't wan... and you don't need to worry about me."

----

She turns to look out across the empty ambulance bay, "What's the trauma?"

"A car swerved on the ice and hit two people on the hard shoulder," he sighs and then seems to go on a tangent, "You know, if your car were to break down... in the middle of the night, you didn't have any insurance or whatever and you called someone asking them to pick you up there in the middle of nowhere, and then they did, you'd know you had a friend."

She raises an eyebrow, "Even if they called needing bail money?"

He laughs; a sound that always prompts a smile from her whenever she's been the one to give him something to laugh about.

He ducks his head further down so that she meets his eyes again. "So everything is okay?"

There's the sound of an approaching siren, which breaks their conversation, and she takes a few steps back towards the entrance, leaving him to his emergency. He's still watching her and so she smiles, "Everything is okay."

She stuffs her hands down into her jacket, getting ready to enter the ER vortex and finish her shift.

"I consider you a friend."

She turns to face him again. There's a moment's pause, a moment where everything seems to be on hold before life resumes, the silence between two heartbeats, the moment before the ambulance doors open and the split seconds before the paramedics start delivering the stats at twice the speed of sound.

"I consider you a friend, too."

Turning around she walks back inside, the sound of him telling the patient that everything was going to be okay being muffled as the doors fell shut behind her.

----  
  
He holds her to his chest, shutting his eyes tightly as he tries to keep them together. "You're not."

"I think there should be a law. I think it should be illegal for completely screwed up people to be in relationships."

"Then we'd both be alone," he whispers.

She hiccups a laugh into his chest, a relief to him, and he wraps his arms more tightly around her. He knows that if he lets go now he would lose her, lose them. Permanently. And they were both lost enough as it was.

He kisses her hair, combing his fingers through it gently. He shakes his head, keeping his voice level, "I don't know how to fix this..."

She inhales him deeply, her voice sore, "I feel fixed when I'm with you."

They stand like this for a long time, fastened into this embrace, as though trying to infuse a sense of themselves back into each other. Almost frightened to let go and be forced to stand there facing one another, the distance between them measured in all the things they needed to say, all those heavy fragile things they had never said. But the words are exhausted in their throats, too raw to speak. They both know that words are the first to break.

Snow has fallen in the night and the ground beneath them is nothing but layers of thin ice.  
  
----

Like the tide, the lounge door continues to open and close bringing sounds of life to wash into the room just when silence seems destined to remain forever.

She doesn't expect to remain alone – today is a day of bombardment.

"Tonight. You and me. Dinner and that movie with the guy you like, the accent one, Russell Crowe?"

She turns from her locker to see Susan pouring coffee for two, hair neatly up in a clip despite her scrubs indicating at least one encounter with bodily fluids – all of her held together by invisible strings and pillars.

Abby smiles slightly, "I didn't think you were a fan."

"It takes place on water. He'll be wet." She brings over the coffee, holds one out. "Cream, no sugar."

She hesitates, waves it away awkwardly, "Uh, trying to quit, but thanks – "

"No problem. Coffee here's awful anyway." She returns to the counter and starts rummaging through cabinets. "I think we've tea someplace."

The human species as a whole was fairly adaptive, despite the limited existence they had compared to most others. They endured in a variety of climate locations, in a variety of situations and circumstances, through physical and emotional trauma...

As she watches Susan, she wonders if the failure of one within a species spelled doom for all in the long run.

Susan waves tea packets triumphantly. "Orange Spice or Jasmine?"

"Jasmine? You don't have to – "

"There's going back to crazy and then there's today's version of chaos." She motions to the door, shaking her head. "I'm dusting the lounge next."

She fills Abby's silence with ease.

"There was this woman today, came in with a case of food poisoning only to discover she had a malignant tumor. There used to be days when I considered that a blessing." She sighs, continues, "Then I get the little boy who made it through the car crash that killed his abusive dad. I don't even think there's a category for that."

Sometimes she wishes there were no categories. "Alive?"

Susan looks at her, eyes bright but unreadable. "Yeah," she says softly. She hands over the tea. "Okay. Tonight. I need company, and I'll pay for dinner," she bribes. "Jeans, no make-up and if you dare do anything to your hair, I'll make a commotion in the restaurant."

They leave the lounge together, washed back into the mess of the outside world.

"Don't you need some private time for yourself?"  
  
Susan laughs. "I do, but I've booked the second Thursday of every month."

"It's almost selfish how introverted you are."

Susan gathers her stack of charts and begins to continue on with her patient journey, "6:30 good?"

Abby shakes her head. "I can't," she explains vaguely. "Not tonight."

There are errands and chores and duties and things she is sure she is supposed to do tonight, or maybe tomorrow – the things that she should spend her time thinking about, that would give her something to do.

She is very busy when she puts her mind to it.

Susan raises an eyebrow, holds out for a different answer. "We can make it later..."

Later is for dessert and dancing and sleeping and things she has long lost touch with – the things that she spends her time thinking about wanting.

Abby smiles apologetically. "Next time."

----

Luka raises an eyebrow at him as he enters the lounge and Carter gives a nod in response.

It ranks up there as one of the best greetings they've had.

"Long day, huh?"

Carter's stethoscope feels heavy around his neck and it's a relief to pull it off. "When isn't it?"

Luka shrugs and smiles faintly over his cup of coffee. He guesses he had him there. "The eight year old girl didn't make it?"

Carter's locker's open and he's pulling his scrub top over his head. "No. But the guy who shot her did." Green material obscures his vision until the world comes through again and he drops it to the floor, almost smiles with his newfound cynicism while grabbing a sweater. "And they always do. Life's fair like that."

"When isn't it?" He turns to see Luka smiling back at him, shrugging before taking another sip, "Trying to make sense of random things is human nature."

Carter rolls his eyes with another humourless smirk, "So's revenge, war and hate."

Luka's eyes are dark, they always are, and they hold his. "But we watch people make it through that, don't we?"

Carter looks away, at his empty hands and his feet, "Sometimes, I guess. On good days. But not everything that's broken can be fixed."

His bag's over his shoulder and he slams his locker door shut – on bad days he wishes it had the same effect on the world as a slammed door does on parents. That it told the world in no uncertain terms how and where to fuck itself. The world gives the reaction his parents would have; it barely notices he's done anything at all.

"Being a doctor means all we're left to do is pick up the pieces. Even if sometimes it feels as though maybe that's all we're ever doing." Their eyes meet again and Luka went on, "We just have to keep picking up the pieces the best way we know how."

He didn't move, but his eyes began to take Luka in.

"What if there isn't anything left to pick up anymore?"

He knows he was in the war, he knows he had a family – past tense, he believes he knows why Abby was drawn to him, possibly for the same reasons he himself has been drawn to her, but beyond that he's never really known much about Luka. Never really looked at him and seen anything, not really. Now he almost does.

He doesn't say anything in response and so Carter continues walking-

"She's a friend."

He stops, turns slightly, "I know."

"And I don't like to see her get hurt."

He doesn't say anything.

He knows.

"She needs you."

He raises his eyes again. Luka's eyes offer nothing but kindness inside their darkness; he means this and Carter doesn't know what he's supposed to say.

He doesn't know how to stop her from hurting anymore. He doesn't know if all he's doing at the moment is hurting her.

So he doesn't say anything and lets the locker room door fall shut behind him.

----

He's been sober for six months, one week, four days, and if his watch was ticking solidly with Greenwich Mean Time, fifty-one minutes. His wife would have been proud. Annie always believed in the small accomplishments in life.

Under the glare of the community center's florescent lights, he sits with the others, starkly revealed in their scattered numbers, holding to their belief in the healing power of solidarity though they remain in isolation.

He finds solitude in the back, a silent and anonymous addition to the handful that had found their way to this midnight meeting – the insomniacs, the ones with hangovers, and the nobodies who never came to the same meeting twice because, like him, they always worked too early, too long and too late.

Her arrival coincides with a speaker's introduction, the chorus of hellos drowning out the sound of her footsteps. Though blonde to Annie's brunette, and short and thin to Annie's rounder 5'7" frame, as if to satisfy the theory of opposites attracting, he finds himself staring at her.

Making her quiet way toward the back, she chooses a seat in an island of empty chairs across from him. Committed fully to the unwinding of her scarf, her gaze only flickers around the room – their eyes meeting so briefly he doesn't have time to smile.

He notes that she saves the seat next to her with her jacket, but minutes march their way around the clock and she is left unaccompanied. During the next speaker switchover, he makes his way to the other empty seat beside her. With a small nod, he settles down and focuses his attention on the front of the room.

She's startled, but makes no comment.

More minutes pass in silence between them until he turns slightly. "I'm Tom."

"Abby."

"Nice to meet you."

"Is it?"

There is weariness and pain in her eyes that he hadn't noticed before, a story of disaster told in the dark circles. He shrugs, "I suppose."

Another speaker stands to share.

She turns away, staring at the posters that line the wall, advertisements for pregnancy clinics too often catching her eye.

He watches her read the notices, and wonders what she thinks about... why he finds himself drawn to her...

"Why?" she asks, interrupting his thoughts.

"What?"

"Why are you here?"

It's a good question, and he thinks about all the times and meetings before. "Safety, I guess."

He hits a nerve because she looks at him sharply, for the first time really seeing him.

"Better in here than anywhere else," he offers after a moment.

"Blind leading the blind?"

"I prefer to think we'll successfully navigate the odds."

"And then?"

He doesn't know what she's driving at. "And then... we're okay."

She's silent, thinking through something that turns her attention inward, and he notices that the meeting is winding down. After a moment she reaches for her coat, and then sets it on her lap as she looks at him. "What did you come over here for?" she asks softly.

He isn't sure, but is satisfied with what makes sense. "No one should sit alone."

----

It is just light enough along the sidewalk to make out the wispy shapes of moths and other nightlife as they wing their way into awaiting streetlamps with a brief flicker and sizzled pop. There is no saving those with an instinctual desire for an early demise.  
  
Her stairwell is quiet, almost as dark as the inside of her apartment where the curtains are tightly shut and only the stove shines dully in the light he leaks from the door. When shut, the darkness spreads before him in waves of distorted shadows, like funhouse mirrors lined up to continuously reflect the never-ending abyss of black.  
  
He has come home to himself.  
  
The room is empty, forlorn, cold from her refusal to use the heat. Opening her shades, the city below comes to life in squares of apartment windows that light the stars twinkling above. He tries to remember his plan for sleep.  
  
Night after night he's committed himself to her side - not out of pity, and not because he thought he'd be able to help anymore. He wonders if the sun has ever felt burdened, forced to carry the weight of the Earth.

It is the first time he feels like a stranger, an unwanted guest. Alone in her apartment he sits on the couch stiffly, as though it were newly bought and the protective plastic covering still not removed.  
  
He misses her presence, sitting beside him or not. She might be the essence of chaos, of denial, or the inevitable rise of pessimism, but like the calm within every storm, even her self-destruction is plagued with hope. Or it used to be.  
  
He knows where she is, in a general sort of way, knows she doesn't need him, and cradling a pack of cigarettes that has been pulled from the pocket of his jacket, helps himself to the view of Chicago.  
  
He had turned into the store having convinced himself to buy coffee or a newspaper... or maybe milk, she had almost been out of milk... when he walked out with only a pack of cigarettes, not feeling ashamed because he hadn't looked up at the store's mirrors to see his reflection condemning him.Sleep is forgotten. Or, insomnia unavoidable.  
  
He plays with the unopened pack, twirling it between his fingers, watching for the reliable glint of plastic as it returns the hazy white light of the moon.

----


End file.
